\u201cRoone was surely the only television executive of his time who would have dared to put sports in primetime.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Dick Ebersol, NBC Sports Chairman, 2002<\/p>\n
One year after joining ABC, Arledge created ABC\u2019s Wide World of Sports, which became the most successful sports program of all time. The show covered every event imaginable, from baseball to luge, and made announcer Jim McKay\u2019s voice as common a household fixture as his keystone phrases \u201cspanning the globe\u201d and \u201cthe thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.\u201d Arledge was one of the first producers to bring live international events to an American audience via the Atlantic satellite, but that was only the beginning.<\/p>\n
Introducing such techniques as slow motion, freeze frame, instant replay and split screen, Arledge turned sporting events into dramas. He added \u201cup close and personal\u201d athlete features to complement the games, transforming once obscure international athletes into instant celebrities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we set out to do was get the audience involved emotionally,\u201d Arledge told Sports Illustrated in 1966. \u201cIf they didn\u2019t give a damn about the game, they might still enjoy the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Roone-Arledge-post.jpg\" "\\"Roone-Arledge-post\\"")
He made primetime sports into much more than a recording of the game, turning sports programming into its own main event.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn short,\u201d Arledge once said, \u201cwe are going to add show business to sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1970, he created Monday Night Football and, with it, a new national pastime. Arledge had to fight to sell affiliates and advertisers on the idea of primetime football, but he believed in his vision of sports as entertainment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought there was something special about football,\u201d he said in a 1999 interview, \u201cbecause there are so few games and relatively few teams. Also, there is something about the look of a night game, with the lights bouncing off the helmets.\u201d<\/p>\n
The innovations he used on Wide World worked wonders for MNF. Hand-held cameras, end-zone cameras, and cameras on cranes helped Monday Night Football, in Arledge\u2019s words, \u201cchange the habits of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The step into primetime also paved the way for other sports. In 1971, one game of the baseball World Series tested the primetime waters, and a few seasons later, all World Series games were cashing in on primetime viewership and advertising revenue that did not exist before Arledge recognized their potential.<\/p>\n
The producer of 10 Olympic Games, he won one of his 32 Emmy Awards for his coverage of 1972 Munich Games, was inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame, and was the first television executive to receive the Medal of Olympic Order.<\/p>\n
Upon Arledge\u2019s death in 2002, McKay gave a concise summary of the innovator\u2019s work: \u201cHe was the very best at what he did that there ever was.\u201d<\/p>\n
(c) American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":819,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[21],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/inductees"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}